Redshark

15 Aug

The next generation of PCs is about to arrive - up to 50% faster!

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Every couple of years computer hardware shifts up a gear and the next shift is about to arrive. New motherboards, new processors and a new RAM format could see performance increases of 50% or more.

 September will see the release of a new generation of PC hardware that could improve the performance of high-end systems by a huge amount. This new hardware will be expensive at first, but for power-hungry gamers and multimedia professionals the performance gains should be well worth it.

New Motherboards

September sees the release of Intels new X99 chipset and there will be a flurry of Motherboards based around it from Intel, MSI, EVGA and other manufacturers. The X99 or "Wellsburg" family of chipsets support new processors, faster RAM, more USB3 ports and a new version of SATA, SATA Express, which will allow access to a new generation of SSD drives at speeds of 10Gbps, 67% faster than SATA 3.0

New Processors

The new processors from Intel are the Haswell-E family (that's E for Enthusiast) The first three chips should be available in September and they will come in 6 and 8 core variants with clock speeds of 3 to 3.7Ghz and up to 20MB of on board cache. With quad channel memory controllers, 40 lanes of PCI-express 3.0 and support for Hyperthreading this will give up to 16 cores from a single processor and massively increased throughput to the memory and graphics cards. 

New RAM

The other new development is DDR4 RAM. As the name suggests this is the successor to DDR3 and it will offer faster clock speeds and larger modules but at the same time a reduction in voltage and power consumption. DDR4 RAM will be capable of up to twice the speed of DDR3 RAM.

Corsair are already marketing their DDR4 RAM which will be known as Vengeance LPX and Dominator Platinum. Available in 4GB and 8GB modules at first there should be 16GB modules in the future allowing up to 128GB in total. See the press release on the next page for more details.

What will it cost?

As usual the first generation of the new hardware will be expensive, motherboards at $999 and processors for over $1000 have been seen whilst the new DDR4 RAM will be 50-60% more expensive than DDR3, but prices will fall and more affordable versions of the hardware will be released. In the meantime, if you want the fastest PC that money can buy, September is looking like a good time to upgrade.

Read Corsair's press release about their new DDR4 memory after the break


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  • Yes, it can get confusing with Intel's technology, nomenclature, and how the PC app displays or "sees" them. Just wouldn't want anyone to gaining the relative performance of 16 physical cores. We like to call the other 8, "half cores". Just as the hyper Core i3 (2c/4t) never outperforms the non-hyper Core i5 (4c/4t) in multithreaded applications. We've been putting off upgrading our custom-built workstations just for the Haswell-e/X99/DD4 to be available. Not too much longer to wait now. Should eat multi-cam 4K editing and heavy AE projects for breakfast.

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  • " Just wouldn't want anyone to gaining the relative performance of 16 physical cores. "
    CORRECTION: . Just wouldn't want anyone to think they would be gaining the relative performance of 16 physical cores.

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  • Looks like Intel got you covered with a 18 physical core Xeon coming soon:
    http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/15/intel-grantley-xeon-e5-due-soon/

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  • No, it's a thread. The operating system reports it as a logical core, but that's an artifact of how the operating system's scheduler works with it, there's no virtual core involved in Hyperthreading. It's just Intel's way of branding their implementation of simultaneous multi-threading, and it's just a way of allowing the operating system to use processor resources more efficiently.

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  • David, tests have shown throughout the existence of hyperthreading that even if you had all your core active (some chips could be controlled by the os to limit the number of cores used) that hyperthreading gave at most a 30% speed boost. So in fact when you say not quite as fast, it's really 70% not quite as fast as a physical core.

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  • Emmanuel,

    Thanks for that. I'm not arguing that Virtual Cores (ie Hyperthread ones) are even close to as fast as real ones. I think what I was getting at there (and not very well) was that two, physical, cores are rarely twice as fast as a single core, because of the inefficiencies of multi threading, and because, unless the data being worked on is perfectly suited to multi-threading, the gains will be less than 1:(the number of processors). So the losses with Hyperthreading will depend on whether you compare efficiency with a single chip (times the number of cores) or simply vs a real core.

    BTW - here's a historical curiosity. In 2002 I sat down with Intel's Dan Snyder to talk about Hyperthreading, which had just been introduced. I wrote this analogy with a busy kitchen for the UK publication Sound on Sound:

    When you view a kitchen unit as a whole, it appears to be flat out. You can imagine people falling over themselves as they run to fridge, peel the carrots, and throw pies into the oven.

    But when you take a closer look, you realise that there are almost always some “processing elements” that are not in use. For example, the fridge is not always full. And when food is being served, the oven is empty. Not to mention the electric carrot peeler.

    If we regard each food processing element in the kitchen as an actual processing unit on a processor, then it’s clear that even when the workload is at a maximum, there are processing elements sitting idle.

    Knowing this, Hyperthreading can take stock of the free resources, and direct a second program thread towards them. But there is no easy way to determine exactly how much additional processing will happen, because so much depends on the state of the system at a given time. I very much doubt that Hyperthreading will provide the same kind of performance hike that multiple physical processors can, but I do expect that there will nevertheless be a very worthwhile speeding up.

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  • The macpro reflects one of the colossal blunders that killed SGI's attempt at getting into the personal computing market. They developed a personal computer that used a crossbar inherited from SGI's Cray Supercomputer acquisition rather than a standard PCI bus, and the result was FAR more bandwidth than was available in any other PC of its generation.

    There were several catches. One is that because it was based on proprietary technology, it carried a higher price than its competition.

    Another is that due to being proprietary, it required a custom HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) in order to work. That lead to some major launch delays, like nearly a year. And finally, because it was late, it was also not performance competitive with its peers at launch, so no one bought them.

    The macpro has a lot of the same problems, because to update it to a current-generation platform, Apple will have to basically develop a new one.

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  • What exactly do you think is similar? Apple uses a custom board layout, but apart from that everything is standard Intel chipset, Intel CPU, AMD GPUs. I do not see a problem upgrading this layout as long as power consumption and TDP work in that situation. They had to go with Ivy Bridge over Haswell because Haswell Xeons were not available with more than 4 Cores.

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  • I doubt X99 motherboards will be $999. More like $300-400 and under. Only processor at $1,000 or above will be the 8-core CPU, the other 6-core i7 Haswell-e will be low $400s and $600 range.

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  • Lets not forget about adding in those prices for ddr4 mem kits.WOW. We'll be seeing some higher end systems ( 8core) hitting big $$$$, loaded down with gpus of course. Best overall system bump we've seen in a while. The youtube flood just started today :)

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Neil Roberts

I started out as a Video Tape Editor in the 1980’s and was one of the first editors to embrace non-linear editing at the beginning of the 90’s

I then went on to work for Lightworks and was instrumental in the development of their Heavyworks and Newsworks systems, sharing in the Technical Emmy that was awarded to the Heavyworks system.

After Lightworks I moved to Discreet logic (now part of Autodesk) where I was the European product specialist for Smoke and Fire.

I am an accredited Smoke trainer, I also do DaVinci Resolve training and I am an Independent Certified Expert for Sony.

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